


It’s more than fucking unfortunate – it’s unprofessional

by sometimesivegotanidea



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:33:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29068098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sometimesivegotanidea/pseuds/sometimesivegotanidea
Summary: Alexander Seawoll was quite open to admitting that he distinctly disliked Thomas Nightingale for two main reasons: First, he was at least in Seawoll’s opinion a terrible copper and the second had to do with his own perception of social class.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 41





	It’s more than fucking unfortunate – it’s unprofessional

Alexander Seawoll was quite open to admitting that he distinctly disliked Thomas Nightingale for two main reasons: First, he was at least in Seawoll’s opinion a terrible copper and the second had to do with his own perception of social class.

Nightingale wasn’t a bad policeman in the way that he was incompetent – from what he’d heard, the man was quite capable at the entire Harry Potter bullshit, but those were just stories, nobody he knew had ever seen him do anything expect contaminate crime scenes by not wearing the noddy suit, and not aging a bit. No, his problem lay in the way he worked. A one-person department, a man who was apparently untouchable and answered to practically nobody. The lack of reporting had in turn led to a rather lax way of dealing with procedure – as it was non-existent. 

He constantly mentioned ‘agreements’, the one where rich old white men – the irony wasn’t lost on him that he slowly turn into just that - shook hands in some private club over disturbingly expensive booze and nothing was ever written down. There was no decent documentation, no way of conduct. Nightingale was a black hole concerning the flow of information, he didn’t read his email – Seawoll wasn’t sure whether he even knew that he had an email address. At first, he had been shocked at his apparent inability to deal with modern technology – he had no mobile, no computer, but once someone had quietly told him about Nightingale’s true age and he’d stopped wondering – his own mother couldn’t deal with her mobile. But his mother was retired and physically in her 80s, and Nightingale wasn’t. Had he been part of Seawoll’s team, he’d have sent him to a seminar already, several seminars in fact, on how to function in modern society, how to use Excel, and how to type in his findings into HOLMES2. At the end of every case Nightingale just sent in a handwritten, and the handwriting really was quite appalling and frankly ineligible, one page report by courier. Some poor PC then had to digitise and type it up. His only redeeming quality was, that they were rather well-written. He’d obviously learnt that somewhere. Nightingale also didn’t do seminars or courses, not even the required ones. Did he ever actually take a driving test or did he get his licence back in the days where they were just handed out with every new car? Apparently, seminars weren’t required for him – not even the ones on first aid. 

The lack of procedure was another problem, most of the time he seemed like he made it up on the spot – a DCI was supposed to lead and organise a team (not that there was any), how are you supposed to cooperate with someone who doesn’t even bother with the chain of command or regulations. Someone who didn’t know or cared what a communication matrix was and instead just accessed another DCI’s resources without asking first. Once Nightingale was involved you could be sure that the case – officially – became cold: no arrests, no decent records, nothing; but quite probably somebody or something in the morgue under the care of that strange Scotsman – a stain on every decent DCI’s statistics. It drove him mad. And worst of all, Nightingale didn’t even seem like he cared for his work – most of the time he seemed like someone who’d inwardly quit about 20 years prior but was forced to keep going as there was no replacement. 

The personal reason had to do with Seawoll’s own background. Despite the way he carried himself today, he was originally a working-class boy from the Midlands. His father had been a blue-collar worker and his mother had worked at the grocery store. As one of his teachers had once said: ‘In that milieu, you either become a cop or a criminal, the background’s the same’. He’d spent his youth fiercely protesting Margaret Thatcher and still held a strong dislike for everything she stood for. Nightingale was just that. His posh public-school accent, his tailored suits, his agreements, the way he carried himself, and the fact that he read The Telegraph of all papers. It all screamed conservative, golden spoons, old money, and the kind of understated upper-middle class ‘I wouldn’t consider myself rich’-attitude he so despised. Considering that he had well passed the century, very old money; probably gained by squeezing it out of the colonies or non-existent workers rights. There had to be, they earned the same as DCIs. He didn’t know how Nightingale paid for his rather affluent lifestyle otherwise. Well, he didn’t have to pay for his lodging, but each of his watches was worth several months of salary. 

Nightingale was a child of the Empire, the old days when Victoria ruled and the British Empire still existed in all its glory, untouched by two World Wars, several independencies and with the smug arrogance of a nation, who believed themselves to be the champions of the world, still intact. He had never dared to look his colleague up in the system – for one because everything you looked up there was logged for exactly this very reason, the other because he was very sure that file had been scrubbed. The only thing he had to go on was Nightingale’s name, a birthday (ignoring the year), and the knowledge that he’d worked for the Foreign Office back in the old days as well as served in the Second World War. 

Thanks to Google he’d found out a bit more – apparently archives thought that after a hundred years everybody concerned was dead and you could put it on the internet. For one there still existed quite a few Nightingales over the internet and even though the name wasn’t that uncommon, their background and vita gave him some idea, that they might be distantly related. There was a Lata Nightingale who was a conservative MP for some county in the South of England – her profile showed a middle-aged woman with piercing grey eyes that reminded him of someone, a hedge fund manager in London, and a well-known journalist who work for the NYTimes. There were more, but they were the most prominent ones. What bore more fruit was looking up historical stuff – he felt a bit like a stalker, but he’d rationalised himself into think it was just professional interest. The MP’s vita had mentioned a great-grandfather who’d been a Member of Parliament back in the 1910s as her inspiration for going into politics (someone had obviously been grasping for a family connection). Some digging had revealed that person to be a ‘Arthur Nightingale, Esq.’. The dates matched someone who could have been Nightingale’s father or uncle. The resemblance was quite certainly there. The man had – of course – been a Tory, pillar of the establishment, landed gentry; wife, mistress, seven (legitimate) children, and a summer house in the countryside. Who’d have guessed. 

And then one day Grant had shown up, and it had all changed. Not in one day, it happened gradually over the span of several years. Nightingale was still a posh bastard, but he’d become a much better police officer. Grant had – without really noticing – become Nightingale’s personal assistant, IT-department, colleague, apprentice, and oversight committee at the same time. He deployed a rather successful bottom-up management style, and Nightingale – opposite to many other people in his position – didn’t feel undermined, instead he almost seemed grateful. He started following (Grant’s) procedures, he went to seminars, he engaged with colleagues, and listened to (some) advice. Nightingale in return had somewhat refined Grant’s manners and taught him how to blow stuff up with his mind. And while Seawoll didn’t admit it, he liked Grant – a man much like him in terms of background – and had been surprised that Nightingale had chosen him of all people. Or perhaps Grant had chosen Nightingale.

Seawoll noticed that whenever he and Nightingale worked a case together these days, he ended up being the one in charge, with his fellow DCI happily ceding the spotlight (and the responsibility). Stephanopoulos had once theorised that Nightingale was a soldier not a commander, and she was right. Because he did good work when he had clear instructions and orders. The basics in employee management: some are just not cut out for a high level of independence. Seemed like some of Nightingale’s superiors hadn’t read the memo for decades or perhaps he didn’t have any. It often seemed, as if the Folly and its then sole member were just a forgotten department in a broom closet somewhere in a basement. 

He still didn’t read his mail though, he finally had a mobile– one that could only call and text and was always switched off, but it was a start. Perhaps one day Grant would upgrade him to a smartphone. Rome wasn’t built in a day either. 

And then one day he overheard Nightingale while he listend to ‘the wireless’ during a stakeout complaining about the Tories and Johnson, going as far as calling them worse than Thatcher. And it occurred to Seawoll that he really didn’t know that much about his fellow DCI, he’d over the years assumed most of it by the way he represented himself to the world.


End file.
